


End of the World

by antierotic



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-15 01:57:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10548112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antierotic/pseuds/antierotic
Summary: The spreading epidemic leads Wynonna and her gang back to Purgatory, where she's been missed for three years. There's no telling how much of the town is still standing.Teammate Nicole Haught gets introduced to a local.Zombie Apocalypse AU





	1. Chapter 1

It was high noon. 

You have a few hours before dark settles, a good amount of ammunition and a half a canteen of water. Summer started, and that meant more smelling, rotting bodies crawling around, gnawing on scattered corpses. Usually you could just step over them.

When it was winter, when everything started, the infected were fresh. So many Innocent people, living their lives, until they were bitten and became mindless, violent monsters that only desired human flesh. That was a lot time ago though, and the initial shock wore off.

Now it’s just about survival.

The team was back at the current makeshift base--well, a “base.” It was an old boarded-up house that had a balcony on which you could surveil the whole town. You and your friends have been holed up in it for about a week so far, clearing out infecteds throughout the neighborhood and scavenging for supplies.

So you’re on recon, checking out the areas on the edge of the city. You came across a goldmine: a warehouse. Earlier, while driving in the week before, you thought you spotted it in the distance, and now you’re here to claim the oasis.

A warehouse means stock. Stock means supplies. Anything from candy bars, alcohol, or good old canned spaghetti.

A call on the radio comes: “Haught; status?”

After a bit of fumbling for the utility belt, you respond. “I’m here, Doc. What’s up?”

“Just lookin’ out for a young lady out on her own; will you be in need of assistance ma’am?” the radio crackled. You were still in range.

“No sir, should just be a routine scout. I doubt anything is left around here but it wouldn’t hurt to take a look. Should be back within the hour.”

“Copy that, ma’am.”

The fence covered its perimeter. With a simple snip with a pair of bolt-cutters, the padded lock on the chains gave way. It swung open with a suspicious ease. That was when your instincts first set off a red flag.

Approaching the front door was a simple task, but another observation let to you getting, what they call, ‘a bad feeling’. 

There were body parts strung out carelessly across the grass. Infecteds’ body parts, human body parts, you couldn’t tell. This was a casual thing to come across these days. But it struck you once you opened the unlocked door,

How could all these bodies be here if the fence was pad-locked? Someone could’ve been here and chained it up after---

And there was a fateful cry that cracked through the still, muggy silence of summer:

“Eat shit!”

You hit the deck after throwing the door open, then your combat instincts kicked in. You dip and roll underneath a large desk, snatching your rifle from your shoulder as gunfire slashed through the entrance behind you. 

“A fucking shotgun?” you cry over the desk at your attacker. “Are you fucking kidding me with this overkill??” You crawl as quickly as you could to the next desk, trying to hide as best as you could from the enemy.

With a flick of your rifle bolt, the voice calls from over your barricades:

“I’m tired of your guys coming in and acting like you--” the shotgun clicks angrily as the woman’s voice lectured, “Fucking, wait, shit!” 

Your radio weighed heavily on your belt, and you realized the entire incident must’ve been transmitted to the team back at the house, since you had not turned off the receiver. 

“Haught. Haught come in,” Doc gritted through a clenched jaw. “Status?”

Focus, focus, keep calm, and you’ll live.

You stood abruptly and tactfully with precise aim at your target. Just like in the academy, you thought, you can do this.

But the target was just a small woman, fumbling with a jammed shotgun. It almost seemed comical, the way she cursed at it, calling it a shit-eater, almost forgetting that you were standing there staring at how pretty she was down the sight of a bolt-action rifle.

“Haught, come in!”

The woman looked up at you, laying her useless gun on the nearest desk, with fiery eyes. She looked like she was mad at you for breaking her toy, and that it would take a lot of apologizing for her to forgive you.  
They did not teach this in the academy.

“So, what then?”

“Huh?” you replied dumbly.

“I mean, are you gonna take the shot or what?” she asked, as if you were wasting her time.

Instead, you heft your rifle onto your back again, walked over to her, weaving between flipped over desks, and took her gun away from her. 

“We don’t have anything to give you. There’s nothing left to take.”

You exert yourself, springing back the catch, fastening the shotgun shell properly in its chamber for her. The gun was sawed off for Christ’s sake.

“Do you know how fucking dangerous these things are? You’ll blow off your arms the next time--”

“The way you did that, that was kinda hot,” she purrs.

You look up at her from the desk incredulous. Was this stranger really pretending that they weren’t in the middle of this half-assed, convoluted shoot-out in which nobody knew who really wanted to kill? 

They were both killers, you knew, but something was kinda making it hard to go ahead and do the thing.

This woman was really pretty, and boy, was she sexy wielding a sawed-off shotgun. She couldn’t have been any more than a hundred pounds. Shooting her outright would have been against all your honor. 

And then your back is to the ground.

She distracted you with some menial flirting, just to pound you a solid punch in the gut, trip, then flip you over hard onto the dusty tile floor. The woman grappled for your knife, but it was too easy to flip you both over, unsheath it and put it to her neck. 

Awkwardly enough, in the struggle, you ground against each other, and accidentally rubbed your thigh against a...sensitive area. The small woman gritted her eyes closed, and let out a weak, “Ah.”

You jump up to your feet, scrambling for words as your face lit up, red with embarrassment.  
They did not teach accidental dry humping in the academy.

“I’m so sorry, I mean--I didn’t mean to, uh, it was just--”

And then the woman interrupts you with a huge laugh. A warm laugh that meant that she was making fun of your awkwardness, but it fluttered with such a contagious happiness. You did not want to kill her at all. 

“Stop laughing at me!” you cry, with a slight smile on your face. “I could kill you y’know!”

“Die!” She swung your knife, it whistles through the air as you spring backwards, dodging the slash. Your enemy trudges after you, and you slap the blade away with the butt of the shotgun that was on the desk. 

“Hands up!”

You look back at the decimated entrance to the warehouse and see Doc and friends wielding their weapons, aimed at your attacker. He was at the front, with his good ol’ .45 Colt. You never felt such a wave of relief wash over you.

“Wynonna?” the woman inquires of your teammate standing beside Doc. 

“...Waves?” Wynonna answers back. She steps forward, lowering her Peacemaker. “Nicole, put the gun down. Now.”

“Nicole?” She looks over at you. “Is that your name?”

“Nice to meet you,” you respond lamely.

“It’s been three years, Wynonna. Now you decide to come back to Purgatory?”

“Waverly, all of us came looking for more shelter, and I just remembered the homestead.”

“Waverly,” you tested her name on your tongue. “How do you know each other?”

Both begrudgingly respond, Wynonna and Waverly Earp: 

“We’re sisters.”


	2. Interlude

You end up back at their “base” upon declaring to Wynonna there was no way you were taking them back with you to the homestead. At least, not yet. 

“Here you go,” Wynonna offers a bottle of water to you. The events of the day pore over your mind over and over again. Today you almost died. Again. 

“Thanks,” you say meekly, keeping your eyes on the ground. 

“Look, Nicole says she's really sorry about what happened. She said she had no idea we knew you.”

You shake your head, “It’s fine, it was actually quite the deliberate trap that I messed up. Your friend should have ended up very dead.”

Wynonna laughs and sits beside you by the house fireplace. It's night now. The buzzing of mosquitos over decaying bodies sounds in the distance over the crackling fire. “Yeah, I would think so.”

You don't respond, but take a long drink of water. 

“Who was that trap for?”

You angrily gulp down the last sip, “Why do you care? Aren't you just passing through?”

She shakes her head, “Baby girl, Purgatory is the team’s last stop.”

“Yeah, right.”

“We came to get you.”

“Who knows that, huh? You didn't tell Nicole that.”

“I just...might've left it out.”

“‘Left it out.’”

“I didn't want them to say no. I couldn't make it here without them. Nicole is a rookie officer from Langley Falls down south. Her shot is incredible.”

“She will get you killed, Wynonna. Your friend didn't take a single shot at me.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that's a compliment.”

You didn't know what she meant by that. 

Wynonna raises a hand to stroke hair from your face, “Who is here with you?”

“Barely anyone,” you flinch away from her touch. “Everyone is dead, Wynonna. I don't know why you came back. Especially now. After so much time.”

She just stared at you. It seemed like she was waiting to hear you say those words. 

“Why did you stay?” she whispered. “Waverly, if there was nothing left, why didn't you go?”

You stood up and walked out. 

\---

The balcony was tranquil. But you weren't alone. 

“Sour mood, too, huh?” you ask. 

Nicole doesn't look back at you. She's sitting in a lawn chair, looking over the town with that rifle in her lap. Protecting you all. 

You stand beside her, “Langley Falls huh?” you try again. 

“Don't worry, everyone there is dead too.”

She strikes a cigarette to life. 

“I couldn't protect them,” she continues. “And I'm sorry for the mix up. Again.”

“You shouldn't smoke. Makes you weaker.”

Nicole looks down at it, “Yeah, but an existence devoid of vices is not an existence at all.”

“I don't fall for hedonistic garbage like that.”

“I don't know what I'd do if I killed Wynonna’s baby sister.”

“I'm not a baby.”

The way Nicole looks up at you with that stupid cigarette in her mouth, dragging from it and smiling, it does...things to you. You need a distraction. 

You pick up the pack resting on her thigh. “Camels huh? My boyfriend smokes these.”

“Boyfriend huh?” she speaks, smoke wafts from her smirking lips. 

“Boyfriend.”

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slow  
> BURN


	3. Scene II

“Are you ever going to speak to me again, Waves?” you try once more.

Waverly’s keeping her back to you. Nicole went inside, since her shift to keep watch was over, more than likely she was also clearing out when the awkwardness was too much. You came outside to make amends, but that plan isn’t going too well.

“Look, I’m sorry. I always meant to come and visit but--”

“But you didn’t.”

You don’t say anything to that.

“When everything started... Back before everything started, I was working back at Shorty’s. We heard everything from the radio, and the TV. That people were getting sick. And then they started getting sick nearby.”

You take this as permission to sit in the lawn chair beside hers. She continues, 

“And you didn’t come to Willa’s wedding; we were all upset. She tells me you’re never ever coming back. But I waited for you.”

“What happened to them?”

“I couldn’t leave, not knowing if you might come back, but her and her husband didn’t want to risk it. He told her either we would all die together, or we would make a run for it, right after we saw our first infected eat a woman on the street. The police came but there were so many of them already. All of a sudden, random people would get sick.”

“Baby girl, I’m so sorry. I should have--”

She started choking on welling tears, “I saw the two of them leaving our house from my window. They left without telling me, at night, and I saw them attack her. It was so slow. I took Daddy’s gun from downstairs and tried to save them, but it was too late. 

With the noise and all, I attracted them to the homestead, but we’ve got that good fence around it. One by one until morning, I was getting rid of them, throwing up from the smell, making sure none of them touched me at all.”

The wind whistles, pushing cool air through the muggy heat. Waverly is wearing a tanktop, showing off several deep, angry scars lashing over her back. They cracked through her smooth, tanned skin. Goosebumps prickle on her shoulders as she cradles herself in the chair. 

“That’ll never happen again. I promise.” You lock eyes on hers.

A teardrop falls from her chin. “You don’t know that.”

“I can promise you’ll never be alone like that again. Oh God, Willa,” you were close to vomiting over the realization that your eldest sister met such a disgusting fate. And that your little sister was there to see it. 

You and Willa were never especially close, but you still loved her. You always had a particular doting fondness for your younger sister, and a special protectiveness of her. She looked like a doll, and always was loyal, trying to make other people smile all the time. Baby girl, you called her, since you first met her. 

“You are so grown up now, Waves.”

“I am grown up!” she sniffles, in a laugh. 

“I missed you a lot. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to protect you.”

Waverly gets up from her seat, and astonishingly enough, throws herself into your lap for a deep embrace.

“I can’t take you back to the homestead if you’re just gonna leave again.”

“I’m staying this time. We’re all staying. There’s nowhere left to run these days. And if we do run, I’m pulling your ass with us.”

Waverly whispers into your shoulder, “You have no idea how scared I was. How scared I was at first. I didn’t sleep for days. I don’t wanna die that way. Not ripped apart, Wynonna. I waited for you to come home.”

You held her tighter. “I know, I know.”

The two of you sat like that for a little while longer.


	4. Scene III

So many things were going through your head before bed.

The house you were bunking in came with two bedrooms on the second floor. Usually Doc and Wynonna shared their quarters for...intimacy reasons. That left you alone to your thoughts. Wynonna had a sister, who lived in this town that they struggled to get to. Wynonna promised there would be a community here, but there was little to nothing, from what they'd seen so far. Hopefully sister Waverly would lead you to the people she was sheltered with in the morning.

Right before sleep was when the panic would set in. 

You heard the doorknob turn and you lunged for the pistol on the nightstand. Before long, a frightened Waverly Earp appeared meekly.

"Sorry, I just--"

"No, no! It's not your fault. Please come in," you set the gun back down in its place. "I just hate getting snuck up on."

"I didn't mean to, its just..."

"Bedtime and the lovers are busy loving?"

Waverly chimed the sweetest laugh. "It's been a little while since I've seen my sister so keen on someone."

You invite her to have a seat on the edge of the bed, while you tried to find a shirt to button over your sports bra and boxer shorts. "Yeah, they've been heart-eyes since Langley. That was where the three of us met. I don't mind that you and I had a rocky start, considering the way I met Wynonna."

The local police were getting wiped out by infecteds left and right. You were just a rookie trying your best in the worst situation imaginable. All of a sudden, a woman is on the roof of a house in Langley, blowing the heads right off of them from long-distance with a Peacemaker, screaming "Eat it, assholes!" Days went by but the fighting and spread of sickness never slowed. These infected people were strong, adrenaline-powered monsters. It didn't faze Wynonna one bit. You told this all to Waverly, and finished with, 

"You Earp girls sure are something, aren't you?"

The other girl turned away with a smile. You hoped it was to hide a blush.


	5. Thinking About Not Thinking

You fell into a deep, dark sleep. 

Everything was as it was. You were in a hallway, sounding full of the noisy class bell. Lockers clattered, teenagers scuffled unenthusiastically through the halls around you. The books in your hands were heavy; an anthology of Shakespeare and a few Latin dictionaries. 

“Hey!” he calls from behind you. You twirl around, flashing a winning, million-dollar smile. It was this time of day, right after sixth period that he passed by your locker. He was always surrounded by the coolest, and physically largest, students at your high school. Champ Hardy was somewhat of a town loverboy, and his attention was making you heat up.

“What’s going on, nerd?” Champ reaches for your things. “Latin next, right?” He’s stammering a bit and smiling that flirty smirk.

Then you were in the bed of his truck, right after having sex for the first time. It felt like everything, and nothing, all at once. You wondered if it turned some kind of irreversible switch inside of you that turned you to a woman. Champ looked so happy to take you; like he just consummated a marriage. 

The stars were everywhere, they seemed to all be pasted to a dome that hovered over your little town. Your little town was like a glimmer amongst a cosmic ceiling. Would there ever be a time when you could see the sun? 

For a moment, it didn’t seem too bad, inheriting this certain rock from the sun, with a boy you loved.

\----

Graduation came, and you were just slightly bitter about not making valedictorian. Willa came, and Wynonna showed up drunk, shouted when your name was called, and was escorted out. Later she apologized but you think she was trying to make up for all that family that they didn’t have. All the family that couldn’t show up. Mama and Daddy were long dead, and quiet at that.

You got medals for swimming, cheer team, got your yoga license through gym class, excelled in French, Latin, German and English Literature. You were a star, but a star that belonged to no one.

Champ Hardy didn’t stop trying though.

After really good blowjobs, he would hold you tightly and talk about moving away from living atop Shorty’s bar, and starting a real life together. Wynonna was gone, Willa had long started her life at the homestead with her husband; it was time to start your own life.

Wherever they would go, there would be no place for all the records you collected. Records about, well, everything. Everything ever you could get your hands on. Shorty let you use storage space for rare copies of Latin prayer books. To not bother Champ with the light, you sat so many nights in that specific closet learning all about Sanskrit translation. 

Trying on reading glasses in the mirror, you wondered if anyone would make fun of you. Even if someone merely pointed them out, you’d probably get embarrassed. You used them to read some of Wynonna’s flippant postcards from wherever the hell she was now.

You missed her. Your big sister, protector, love.

In 11th grade, Chrissy Nedley was dared to kiss you in front Champ’s football team buddies, and boy did it do more than make you blush. That incident went on a list of things you’d seal up in a box and shove into a crevice of your mind that should always be overlooked. How did you end up forgetting that happened?

\-----------

Then you woke up with that woman looking down at you.

“It’s morning,” she said without any special inflections.

“I was dreaming.” You daze at the ceiling, at her face that radiated with pale heat from the sun. Illuminated dust danced in the air. Her long, red hair glittered rosily. “Your hair is nice.”

“I was thinking of cutting it.”

“It would still look nice.”

“Look, Waverly…”

At night, you ended up sleeping at the foot of the bed, to make Nicole and yourself feel better about staying in close quarters. You still trusted her enough to fall asleep so deeply near her. She had a seat at the end of the bed, beside you.

“I’m sorry I shot at you!” you blurt and clutch the blankets to cover your face. You’re still laying down. “I just really thought you were one of them. They come around and just break everything, try telling us what to do…”

“It’s not that, I just, this is all a bit confusing to me. I know we just met but, the way we have to keep on living, we can’t keep things to ourselves, do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I understand, but I’m not ready,” you mutter, slightly muted by the blanket. 

“What the hell is this place? Wynonna told us there was a community here; a place that is trying to rebuild, or at least offer protection. I don’t know about her, but I know Doc and I are very over this nomadic life. So please, before I go ask Wynonna, would you mind telling me exactly what I got myself into?”

“I’m a Virgo.”

“That’s not funny.”

“You’re too serious, officer.”

“You call me that again right now, and I’ll arrest you.”

The silence after that buzzes with tension and electricity.

“My name is Waverly Earp, I’m 21 and I’m trying my damndest to survive this fucking cataclysm ravaging the country, if not the planet. I live with my boyfriend at my childhood home, at the homestead. It’s really good for protection, since we’ve got nice fences, nice and barbed up too. Some people near us are still alive, so we share supplies, try and grow food or find game. Am I missing anything?” 

Nicole just bows her head, to look at her palms in her lap.

“Then Wynonna lied to us.”

“You don’t have to think about it like that.”

“She did, she totally did. Just to get here, back to you I assume?”

“That’s a fine assumption.”

“Well, Miss Waverly Earp, ma’am, you’ll have to make it up to Doc and I somehow.”

You didn’t know what she meant by that, but you liked it anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> i just really like lesbians and zombies


End file.
